Keeping Me Off the Edge
by azunasulaykrum
Summary: Fenris has always believed that he was nothing more than a living weapon. Hawke's philosophy has always been "less weapon, more living." Set between and may sometimes expand on the events of Dragon Age II.
1. The Wounded Coast, Night

The sky was blanketed with twinkling stars, stretching as far as the eye could see. Below it, the sea shimmered in the moonlight. Fenris scoffed at the sight; it seemed a nice, if excessive view, a complete world away from the bleakness of this place Varric called the Wounded Coast. The air was chilly; the salt of it would probably wear away lesser, ordinary armor. Good thing his armor was neither lesser nor ordinary.

He would've liked to dangle his legs over the edge of cliff for a few minutes, just to know what it felt like to be weightless, but he decided against it. If trouble came bearing down on the camp, he had to be ready. That was why Lethandralis lay within arm's reach in the sand, among the shells and dried coral.

"Fenris?"

Fenris looked over his shoulder. Hawke stood there with a bottle of ale in one hand, her robes slightly blown about by the breeze, her edges limned in the campfire light. Thirty paces behind her, Isabela was leading a drunken Anders and an amused Varric in a rousing and erotic shanty, while Aveline polished her sword with a rag, obviously and pointedly trying not to listen.

Hawke tilted her head to the side, exposing her long neck. Fenris caught himself watching the motion and cursed inwardly. He noticed a while back that there were little moments like this one, when he could feel Hawke breaching his walls without her even knowing what she was doing; lately, he was starting to think that some part of him was letting her succeed.

She said, "You hardly touched your food."

Fenris turned to the horizon once more. "I'm not very hungry."

He could feel Hawke raising an eyebrow. He felt her brush away a few conches, crouch to the ground beside him, and shuffle her legs so that she could get more comfortable in her new position. She sat two handspans away from him; Fenris knew because the tips of their fingers were but a few inches apart. The bottle, she set between them.

Hawke said, "Aww, that hurts my feelings. I made that bread, you know."

One side of Fenris's mouth turned up in a wry twist. Hawke was a mage with a sense of humor he could get behind, he'd give her that. "Is that so? No wonder it was a little hard."

"Excuse me, sir," Hawke's voice took on a mock offended tone. "Are you saying I'm a terrible baker?"

Fenris glanced at her. He'd heard from Varric about how Hawke had lost her sister Bethany as their family and Aveline escaped Lothering. He hadn't been there in the Deep Roads when Hawke decided to give up Carver to the Grey Wardens rather than let the taint take him. Fenris had no family of his own, and he couldn't imagine the pain of losing them, but he could imagine that the weight Hawke carried was heavier than his sword. He'd often wondered how this strange apostate woman could smile and crack jokes so easily, but he could never decide if she was a fool who took nothing seriously or a fighter who wore her strength in ways he had yet to comprehend. Looking at her now, pretending to be upset with him-poorly, considering the cheeky grin-he made a decision.

"I'm saying," Fenris said at length. "That the bread is as hard as you are on the inside."

Hawke's grin faded a little. She looked out to sea. "Well, now I don't know if that was an insult or a compliment."

Fenris's ears twitched. They'd never done that in the Imperium. The annoying quirk began around the time he came to Kirkwall. Further observation made him conclude that they were a reaction to embarrassment-and he was definitely often embarrassed around Hawke. Definitely more often than he would've liked.

"Forgive me, I'm not practiced at giving compliments," he hitched up one leg and rested his chin on the knee. "I didn't know anyone worth giving them to before you."

Hawke looked at him with that raised eyebrow yet again. "And yet you're an expert at flattery?"

Fenris chuckled. He hadn't realized how that had sounded. "We both know I'm not good at that, either."

It was Hawke's turn to chuckle. "Oh, I believe you're better than you think. Ale?"

Fenris eyed the bottle. "I'm not sure. Did you make it?"

"Every time, your sense of humor startles me."

Smirking, Fenris picked the bottle up, took a gulp, and set it down between them again. Overhead, a seagull squawked, and below, the surf roared. Behind them, the sounds of Anders' sobbing about a Ser-Pounce-a-lot were dying down. As Hawke and Fenris stared at the waves crashing on the rocks, a silence fell. It took Fenris a second to realize that it was the comfortable kind.

"Fenris," Hawke said.

Fenris grunted in acknowledgment.

"Why are you sitting out here, away from the camp? It can't be to set a watch, unless you're expecting the darkspawn to rise up from the sea."

Fenris said nothing. He didn't know, himself.

"I'll tell you what I think."

Fenris suddenly gripped his ankle with the hand that had been lying close to Hawke's. "I didn't ask."

"You didn't ask, but I'll tell you anyway," Hawke said.

Fenris glanced at her again; this time, Hawke was reclining on her elbows, her gaze at the stars and her throat exposed. He began to wonder what it was with him and the curves of her neck.

"I've noticed that even when we're at the Hanged Man, you tend to sit a seat apart from the rest of us at the bar," Hawke continued.

Fenris tightened his grip, thinking that the pain of his metal fingertips digging into his leg would brace him for whatever painful revelation Hawke was about to make. He did nothing to stop her from talking. Some part of him didn't want to hear this-whatever _this_ was-but a evidently, a bigger part of him was curious and it was winning.

"You're used to being alone, and yet you keep tagging along with us when I ask you to."

He always thought it was because he was showing Hawke his gratitude for her having helped him deal with Danarius's bounty hunters on the night they first met, but he knew now that that reason had slowly been giving way to another.

"All your memories are of you being alone or ending up alone eventually. Being alone is all you know."

Fenris released his ankle. He hitched up his other leg as he took a swig from the bottle again. The ale burned as it traveled through him. He thought of his life at the Imperium, barely speaking to the slaves who feared Danarius's special pet; of living with kind Qunari whom he later murdered at Danarius's command; of running from town to town, realizing that the most he'd spoken to someone was one of the bounty hunters, before he crushed the man's head.

He put the bottle down, his hand still wrapped around the neck as he said, "You don't know a thing about me, Hawke."

Hawke shot him a burning gaze, more searing than the ale, confirming what Fenris had always suspected: that she was lovely even when she was serious. "On the contrary, I _do_ know one thing. _You are lonely._ And I'm going to make you a promise."

She sifted through the sandy ground and lifted something between them. It was a jagged piece of coral as big as his palm; even by moonlight, Fenris could tell that it was a brilliant, blood red.

Before he could stop himself, he asked, "You're going to make me a promise on the bone of a dead animal? I must have failed to notice that you're drunk, Hawke."

"Oh, I don't know," she shrugged. Her smile returned to her face and voice. "It seems more romantic than making you a promise on a bottle of ale, don't you think?"

The sound that Fenris made was the lovechild of a grunt and a chuckle.

"Come on, Fenris, humor me!" Hawke's eyes darted to Fenris's hand, still on the bottle's neck. She held out her free one.

He would never say so, but the gesture moved Fenris. He'd never told anyone, but Hawke must've known that he hated being touched. He shouldn't have been surprised, but now he knew for sure that Hawke had been watching him as much as he'd been watching her. He removed his hand from the sand and placed it an inch above her outstretched one, palm up.

Hawke put the piece of coral in his palm and folded his fingers over it. Her own hands lingered atop that hand. Fenris realized that the metal edges of his gauntlet must be cutting her fingers, but she said nothing about it. Nothing in her gaze or her smile betrayed any pain; he felt that that made her somewhat unreachable.

Hawke said, "I promise you, Fenris, that unless you tell me to, I won't leave you alone."

And though he'd said so before, Fenris felt with a strange surety in his stomach that Hawke, with one side of her face bathed in moonlight and the other in firelight, was beautiful.

"Hawke! Elf boy! Are you two canoodling over there?" called Varric's voice.

"Varric!" objected Aveline, all the scandal perfectly encapsulated in those two syllables.

"Canoodling? On a cliff over the sea without care for the sand getting in your ass? Oh, that's so my style, Hawke!" called Isabela.

"No one wants to hear about your exploits, you slattern-" growled Aveline.

"Ladies, please! W-we- _hic_ -should be fighting darkspawn, not- _hic_ -each o-other-" Anders hiccuped.

Hawke groaned and rolled her eyes. She pushed herself off from the ground and dusted her robes before taking the bottle of ale. Fenris took this opportunity to reach for Lethandralis and resheath it in the scabbard at his back. When he looked back at Hawke, her hand was in front of his face, palm up.

"Let's go back," she said. "Before Varric starts telling tall tales about my sex life."

As Fenris pushed himself off the ground, he ignored Hawke's hand. Hawke raised an eyebrow for the third time that evening.

"You go ahead," he told her. "I'll follow."

Hawke shrugged. Then she gave him a smile that seemed to say 'well, I did promise you after all, didn't I?' and walked toward their raucous, waving companions.

Fenris stared at her retreating back, then at the coral in his palm. He pocketed it. If he was being honest with himself-and he was starting to think that he wasn't nearly so honest with himself as he thought he was-he hadn't taken Hawke's hand because, calloused as it was from handling her staff, he had felt its softness and warmth-its _life_ -through his gauntlet. He'd seen the dents and the shallow, bloodless cuts in her palms, made by the gauntlet's grooves when her hands had slipped off. He knew she could handle such small wounds, such small pains, but still.

Still.

Fenris smiled one of his wry half-smiles. He walked back to camp, the red coral in his pocket warm against his thigh.


	2. Fenris's Mansion, Day

Fenris's particular secret was that he had nightmares every night. The figures were always hazy, always addressing him in muffled voices, always giving him to Danarius, whom he would promptly stab through the throat-only to realize that he'd stabbed his own throat with Lethandralis. Fenris would often wake up screaming, with Lethandralis aimed at some indistinct point in the darkness of his bedroom.

He'd had such a nightmare when a flurry of knocking descended upon his front door one morning. Late morning sunshine streamed in from the windows, almost blinding him. He threw the sheets off, pushed himself, from his bed and made for the wash basin in one corner. Fenris already knew whom it was; the particular enemies he'd made never knocked.

"Coming, Hawke!"

After Hawke gave him the coral, Fenris's afternoons and some of his evenings were becoming...increasingly occupied with chatter. The chatterer was usually Hawke, ranting about Kirkwall's nobles, complaining about her mother's expectations, gossiping about their companions. But strangest of all, sometimes, Hawke would come to Fenris's mansion and spend the afternoon sitting silent. Sometimes, she'd stare out the window; other times, she'd help him drink another bottle to emptiness-always, she'd leave him something like a slice of cake or a piece of chocolate, and once, a painted figurine of a vhenadahl tree, just like the one in the Kirkwall alienage. The tree, Fenris placed in the middle of the dining room's long table, right next to the red coral, untouched since the night Hawke gave it to him.

Thus, he had come to expect-but could still not quite get used to-being roused from one of his brooding moods by Hawke's spirited voice echoing his name over and over again. That morning, he wrenched the front door open and noted that she had a basket of bread, cheese, and grapes slung over one arm. In the other, she held a book bound in red-brown leather.

"Boddahn bought this new Orlesian cheese down at the market yesterday," Hawke said by way of greeting. She brushed past Fenris and set the basket down on a nearby long table, one leg of which was propped on a small chest. "I thought it would go well with your wine. Oh, right! I have something for you."

She held out the book. Fenris took it as if it were a small snake-the poisonous kind. His forehead crinkled in consternation over the familiar but absolutely senseless letters embossed on the front cover.

"It's a book." Fenris hadn't told Hawke that he could no more read that book than read the volumes Hawke's gaze spoke whenever it lingered on the table with the vhenadahl tree and the coral.

"It's a subject you're familiar with," Hawke said. Fenris looked up; Hawke had a tentative sort of expectation on her face. He knew she was trying to be helpful, and so he steeled himself for the direction that this conversation was undoubtedly heading. "The book is by Shartan, the elf who helped Andraste free the slaves. You know about him, right?"

"A little," Fenris said. He had no idea what he was about to unleash when he opened his mouth to say, "It's just...slaves are not permitted to read. I never learned."

After that, Hawke came around twice a week with regularity, although she never dropped by on the same two days from the previous week. By the third week of his reading lessons, Fenris had given up trying to find a pattern. If she kept this up long enough, he feared, he might start expecting her always and Danarius's bounty hunters, not at all. In fact, he was starting to fear her a little-perhaps not Hawke herself, for she was a patient teacher, having experienced teaching her twin siblings to read years ago-but for what her visits had come to mean. He chalked it up to how difficult it was to read fifty-two characters, both capitalized and not; in fact, he always went to bed exhausted now, as if he'd been training all day.

Their lessons took place at the dining room table, the coral and the vhenadahl tree always in view. Fenris suspected that Hawke had chosen that spot on purpose, as if he needed further reminding that she would not leave him alone.

"What is the point of all this, anyway?" Fenris asked one afternoon, disgusted. He had pushed away the Book of Shartan for emphasis. Learning to read, he realized from the get-go, was nowhere near as instinctual as learning to fight. As soon as he thought he figured out how a word was supposed to sound, Hawke would point out a combination of consonants around the vowels that defied the rules.

"I know what you're thinking," Hawke said from where she was sitting on his right. There was a time when Fenris would have been irritated at Hawke's assumption that she could at all guess what was on his mind, but these days, it amused him. "'I doubt remembering that 'sound' and 'wound' don't rhyme will smite Danarius where he stands.'"

Fenris grunted and cradled his forehead in his hands.

"Reading is for when you don't have to fight," Hawke said, pushing the Book of Shartan back to him. "It's so that you don't go looking for fights."

"I don't go looking for fights, Hawke," Fenris released his forehead and looked her squarely in the eyes. "In case you've forgotten, the fights come to me."

One corner of her mouth quirked upward. "Well, I don't see any fights here now. Unless you're planning to smite me where I sit?"

Fenris said nothing to that. He glared at the letters on the book, unseeing. He knew he was being unreasonable and impatient and that reading had very important practical uses, but he also felt slow and helpless. Like...like when he was a child at the beginning of his time as Danarius's slave-

Hawke's voice tugged him out of the past. "Besides, how will you read any letters sent to you?"

Fenris scoffed. "I don't get letters. Danarius's bounty hunters also don't tend to announce themselves like that."

Hawke grinned. " _I_ could write you letters, Fenris."

Fenris realized he must've picked up Hawke's habit of raising a single eyebrow, because he did so now at her. "Why would you do that when you come here so often? What would you even say?"

Hawke's grin grew wider. "You'd have to learn to read to find out, wouldn't you?"

Fenris was stunned at first, but then he gave a throaty chuckle. "Hawke, you are the second most infuriating woman I've ever met."

"Really? Only the second? Whom must I best to be the first?"

"Isabela."

Hawke's laugh was hearty and made the corners of her eyes crinkle. "Maker's breath, think of all the ravaging, pillaging, and stealing of precious Qunari relics I'd need to do! I'll just have to settle for second, then. But seriously, Fenris, I could write to you if you like. Little notes that say, 'dear Fenris, don't scowl at the book too much or your face will freeze that way.'"

Hawke was miming writing on a piece of paper now, while her chin rested on her free hand and her eyes were on him. Fenris smiled wryly.

"'Dear Fenris, I think you're a little impatient, but a good student,'" Hawke continued.

Fenris snorted, mostly to stave off how conscious he felt of her gaze, of the short distance between his shoulder and hers. Why did it feel like she could read him so clearly? It was just unfair. "Really?"

"I mean it," Hawke said, and her gaze was piercing now. There was something about the way she said it and the way the rays of afternoon sunlight washed over her curves and edges that made his breath catch. She was so bright, so unlike the darkness of his mind. If he but reached up, he could touch her face. What would she do then, he wondered.

Fenris felt that ever since she moved to her estate that she should be there more often, among the clean and expensive furniture, the servants, the cluster of nobles itching to get in her good graces; that's what any other person moving up the ranks of Kirkwall's nobility would have done. It's what a mage moving up the ranks in Tevinter would have done. But Hawke spent so much time getting into all sorts of trouble in Lowtown that Fenris wondered what point living in Hightown served her.

 _I know you made a promise, but why do you keep visiting me, Hawke? Why are you here?_

"'Dear Fenris,'" Hawke breathed, eyes shining. "'I-'"

Just then, a pigeon-so many of them had migrated to Kirkwall from Ferelden of late-flapped in from an open window and scooped up the red coral in its beak.

Hawke stood up. "-I think we need to catch a pigeon."

But Fenris sat rooted to the spot. He remembered that he had not had a nightmare recently. And as he put two and two together, watching Hawke move in and out of the sunbeams after the pigeon, he suddenly realized why.


End file.
